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Bitcoin Runes rake in $162 million in just four months

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Bitcoin Runes rake in $162 million in just four months

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In this post:

  • Bitcoin Runes made $162.4 million in fees across 15.6 million transactions in just four months.
  • The protocol dominated Bitcoin’s network at first, but activity slowed down, with Bitcoin reclaiming 90% of the network’s activity by mid-July.
  • While other blockchains like Ethereum and Polygon saw big increases in NFT sales, Bitcoin’s NFT sales volume dipped slightly last week.

Bitcoin Runes, a new protocol for NFTs that launched in April, has been raking in the cash. In just four months, it’s pulled in $162.4 million in fees, spread across 15.6 million transactions. That’s a hell of a lot of action for a brand-new player in the NFT game.

The initial buzz was insane. Runes was killing it in the first two months. We’re talking over 300,000 transactions per day on average. And on April 23, things went nuts—more than a million transactions were logged in a single day. 

That’s minting, etching, transferring, and edicts all adding up to 81.3% of the total bandwidth on the Bitcoin network. That’s right—over 80% of Bitcoin’s capacity was chewed up by Runes transactions alone.

But as all things go in crypto, what goes up must come down. After those first two wild months, the daily transaction numbers for Runes started to dip. In the last couple of months, the daily average has dropped to around 50,000 transactions. 

So, while it had its time in the sun, Runes couldn’t keep that blistering pace forever. Meanwhile, Bitcoin started to claw back its dominance over its own network.

From mid-July, Bitcoin has been showing who’s boss again. Since July 16, Bitcoin has been consistently taking back about 90% of network activity. The remaining 10% has been split between Runes, Ordinals, and BRC-20 tokens.

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Runes came out swinging as a fresh and efficient take on Bitcoin Ordinals, presenting itself as a serious contender to BRC-20. For a while there, it looked like Runes might just edge out the competition. 

In the last four months, Runes beat BRC-20 in daily transactions most of the time. BRC-20 only managed to outperform Runes on 13 days. That’s just 13 days out of more than 120. It shows that, despite the recent slowdown, Runes made quite an impact.

Meanwhile, other blockchains for digital collectibles have been seeing some action of their own. After a rough start to 2024 with drops in sales volumes, things started looking up recently. 

Most of the top five NFT blockchains had a solid week last week, in terms of sales. Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, and Mythos Chain all reported increases in trading volume. 

Polygon was the big winner here, boasting a 123.20% spike in seven-day sales. Ethereum wasn’t too far behind with a 32.79% boost, and Solana showed a respectable 12.13% uptick.

Bitcoin Runes rake in $162 million in just four months

Bitcoin, though? Not so much. While others were on the rise, Bitcoin’s NFT sales volume actually dipped by 7.01% compared to the previous week. Not a huge drop, but when everyone else is trending up, even a small decline stands out.

There’s more good news for the NFT market beyond just the sales volume. The number of buyers is also climbing. Over the last week, CryptoSlam recorded over 500,000 NFT buyers, a 37.97% increase from the week before. 

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All of the top 10 NFT blockchains saw more buyers last week, with Solana taking the lead at 220,304 buyers.

Polygon wasn’t too far behind with 89,498 buyers, while Ethereum saw 44,188. This surge in buyers suggests that the appetite for NFTs isn’t going away anytime soon. It might even be picking up again.

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Disclaimer. The information provided is not trading advice. Cryptopolitan.com holds no liability for any investments made based on the information provided on this page. We strongly recommend independent research and/or consultation with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.

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